14/365 The People in the Pews

In a conversation about why I remain Catholic when I do not share what non-Catholics typically see as "Catholic values" one time (over the internet, of course--in person people are never as bold), one ex-Catholic mentioned that she had to leave in order to find a church where she knew all the people sitting in the pews near her shared all her beliefs.

I never considered that something I would want. Sure, when I sit in a Catholic church, I expect that the majority of people there are Catholic. That they can recite the Nicene creed and at some level believe what they say. Beyond that? I don't have many expectations.

I didn't seek out a specific kind of church when we moved here--we'd been attending, half-heartedly, St. Henry/Immaculate Conception (my mother asked me at one point: "Was St. Henry immaculately conceived? Who is St. Henry, anyway?"--it's a combined parish that kept the names...and now it is no more). We lived in its parish boundaries and that's where we went. We moved into our house and my grandmother told me that she knew the pastor and I should give him a call. Turned out, we didn't live in the parish boundaries, but as I was about to hang up to call the correct one, he said, "Wait, do you have kids?" And as we talked more, I decided we'd give it a try. We were geographically closer than to the parish where our address fell, and we went a bit.

Obviously we stayed, with some backsliding and handwringing over the years. But never once did I say to Mike, "I can't belong here because Adam keeps talking about things I don't agree with." I never once felt as though I didn't fit in due to my opinions about politics that did not fall directly into the sphere of belief. I am very liberal on some topics, somewhat less so on others in comparison to Americans in general. I figure I'm probably to the left of the average Catholic, but trust me, there are others far far further to the left.

And a few of them attend my church.

Many people to my right, politically, attend my church. And there are a lot of people who are vaguely similar to me. At least, that's the way it feels to me--politics don't come up as often as they once did with our former pastor. So it could be that I have a skewed view.

But that's the point. It doesn't matter that much at my church (anymore). I can sit in the pews next to that old guy from the Knights of Columbus who couldn't understand Mike's hesitation about joining up. We can both be at this church because we don't have a problem with group think. We are a geographic parish. We do not have any particular focus around politics or devotion. We aren't the Tridentine Latin Mass church and we're not the radical left. We are in the middle. And that's what makes us a good place, frankly. I guess our diversity does make us strong.

Heck, my parents even came back.

25/365 I'm not as Catholic as I thought I was

Huh.

I've been dabbling in genealogy again. I do that when I need to kick other bad habits or when I need something, anything, besides facebook to stare at when it's late at night and the computer is free. And it turns out I'm about half German and the other half is split, not evenly, between Irish and English--although the English is really Norman and we can trace it back incredibly far into France and beyond.

The English, of course, were not Catholic (recently Methodist, and before that, Anglican). The Irish, just as obviously, were--we were from western Ireland. The Germans I always simply assumed were, since the ones close at hand down in Perryville, my goodness, sent a priest to scope the place out before they moved en masse to southeast Missouri. This always makes me laugh a bit. The idea that Fr. Miguel would go find a good place for us to settle down in, say, Mongolia, and then send us 140 character messages on twitter to tell us where to go.

But recently I started looking through my grandmother's father's side of the family. Someone else has already done the hard part for me and all I have to do is click to accept once I see that the dates match and the names make sense. I prefer hunting for the Irish amongst the diaspora as opposed to this orderly (German) way of having it all spelled out for me. But it is good to get done as well.

But I was looking closely at the records and things just didn't seem...Catholic. And a quick Google search (of course) found what I suspected. Lutherans. I was disappointed, I'll admit. But then I looked at some other records.

Mennonites!

I will not hide my excitement.

I know it has nothing to do with my current parish life. But it made me want to call the one Mennonite friend I have and tell her. Dork that I am. I'll probably tell her anyway when I see her (our daughters attend the same school).

But what it does have to do with, parish-wise, is conversion. My mother's mother converted from Methodism. Obviously somewhere along the line somebody converted from Lutheranism. And how did the Mennonites get mixed up with Catholics in Pennsylvania, home of the Quakers, anyhow?

It always fascinates me to hear stories of conversion. Some convert, I'm sure, because of a friend or a spouse. A few from going to Catholic school. But I always marvel at the ones that come alone--or with a casual acquaintance who told them, sure, I'll take you to church...the spirituality of the human heart fills me with a great joy. And although I remain Catholic, I understand those who leave better sometimes than those who join. At least, those who leave for something (instead of for nothing). Search, seek, come and see. Or bloom where you're planted. But be alive.

45/365 Valentine's Day In Review

Today I ran Children's Liturgy and therefore missed what Mike called the "best homily I've heard in ages," brought to you by Fr. Lawrence while Miguel is in Haiti.

Wait. Yes--Miguel is in Haiti at a hospital working as a chaplain. His latest tweet (that would be "thing he posted on twitter") reads: I'm sleeping on a cot outside w a mosquito net. Brushed my teeth on the side of the "road". I am not a camper. I could have guessed that last line but frankly, I'm speechless when it comes to international mission trips of all sorts. It would be enough for me to say "I am not a missionary" in any statement I would make and that would be enough said. So I'm living vicariously through tweeted moments he sends into the ether and hoping he makes it back ok. I spent two years hoping that about Sophia's godparents when they were in Nicaragua.

But yes, Fr. Lawrence filled in. He's wordy, but I've been consistently pleased with what he's had to say. Today, Mike said, was no different.

"Best homily I've heard in ages" is not anything like what happened in Children's Liturgy. I prepared for the wrong year. How could I be so stupid? I realized sitting in the pew before mass began what I'd done and I quickly scanned the readings. So I went downstairs and faked it. I hate that. I hate not being prepared. But I read the readings and the gospel and did a tiny introduction to Lent. Then we reread Jesus' statements and put them into context as best we could. We went upstairs and the homily wasn't finished. Timed it bad on top of everything else. Jessica and I stood in back with the kids and showed them the statues and tried to explain why these were in our church. Then we released them. It was already almost a quarter to 11 and he was still talking.

I spent the rest of mass wrangling Maeve. She was impossible. My theory that sitting closer to the front would help is proving to be a failure. But I fear that if I give up and sit in the back, none of my children will have an inkling about what's going on. I could take her back to the new cry-room of sorts, in the Utah Vestibule, but it's become a baby ghetto. It's chock full of toddlers running amok and parents chatting. Not what I had hoped. It has separated the children, putting the gates up. I won't go back there anymore, alas, because it wouldn't be at all like being in church. Too bad--it was perfect with the rocking chairs and quiet lighting. The gates seemed like a good plan to me but now, well, I'll just say that it's not for me anymore.

So I wrangle her in the pew and whisper sweet nothings into her ear. Like: If you can't sit still we will not go downstairs for a donut. Or, everyone can hear you when you speak out loud, you must whisper, you are 5 years old. I want to add stronger threats but she's got my number. She's just the kind of kid to yell things like "don't hit me again Mommy!" and that would be just perfect.

At the end of mass, we're standing in that lag time between the prayer after communion and dismissal, when announcements happen. Fr. Lawrence announces that he has 4 announcements and a blessing for Valentine's Day. And then a trumpet starts playing. Somewhere. It isn't the trumpet player standing next to Bev at the piano. I'm too far up front; I never see who did it. So Lawrence blesses us first, which is always awkward for me in a way that other blessings are not. I detest holidays that are simply self-congratulatory events, like Valentine's Day and Mother's Day and 4th of July. Yay, I have a good life--but not in a thanksgiving kind of way, you know? More like "yay I have a good life and you should praise me for it." But he blessed us and I never found out who the trumpeter was.

We walked out with Maeve throwing a silent tantrum because she didn't get to go down for a donut...just the start to a day of Maeve tantrums and fits and rages.

Maybe like that character in Flannery O'Connor, I need someone to bless me every damned day of my life.

52/365 St. Louis, again, is too small

"Is that Leo's high chair?" Yvette asks me at the fish fry as she cleans tables.

"No," Becky answers, "Marguerite had it for Joel, but I don't know where they've headed off to."

"They're upstairs. I think my kids are up there, too." Yvette nods and moves on to the next tables. I sit down next to Becky and hold Leo on my lap while I wait for Sophia and Maeve to reappear.

"Bridgett, this is Randy," Becky introduces us. "He knows Bevin"

"How?" I ask, surprised. He seems vaguely familiar but I think it's from church.

"I poke holes in her."

"Ah."

"I'm a piercer." But I knew already. Bevin has quite a few piercings in quite a few places. "How are you related, again?" he asks.

"I'm her older sister."

"How come we've never met?"

I sigh. There are so many reasons.

"Have I met Bevin?" Becky looks at me with her head tilted. I describe Bevin:

"You know, superman black hair, long, gorgeous, very pale skin, blue eyes, as tall as me."

"Is she the one who likes vintage clothes?"

"They both do. They'll be here at Christmas, but usually not some other time."

"Leo's baptism?"

"Sure--she was the one drinking bourbon slush."

"Bridgett," Becky laughs. "Everyone was drinking bourbon slush. You were, Fr. Miguel was, everyone."

"True," I think back on that day.

Randy kisses Becky goodbye soon after and makes his way out. I ask her how she knows him.

"He played bass in my brother's band," she explains. "And I took him to a lot of things in high school. We dated briefly--he has the uncommon ability to remain really good friends with girls he dated."

"That is rare," I think about my exes.

And sitting there, watching Sophia and Maeve come down from the church where Marguerite was nursing baby Joel, listening to the Irish music warming up in front of me, I thought about the coincidence of Randy. I thought about the complete lack of anonymity I have now. It was kind of a cozy feeling, but also a bit smothering. They're always both there when I think about these things, about how small St. Louis is, how long I've been here, how I'm probably not leaving. Cozy and smothering like a fluffy fake fur blanket on a rainy February evening.

56/365 Lent is for giving up

Sophia is big into telling Maeve what she should give up for Lent. This is right up Sophia's alley: religious, creative, and bossy. Maeve, however, is reacting just as she should. She ignores her. It's a good system they have.

Sophia has given up watching TV after school. She can watch if we're all watching, which is rare, actually, except that the Olympics have been on and she really wanted to see them. As vices go, this is small, and she decided being with her family was more important (and seeing ice skating was just an added bonus).

Maeve has decided, essentially, to ignore Lent. I don't push this sort of thing, frankly, because, (a) she is 5, and (b) punishing rules about religion without the capacity to understand them well leads to early burnout. I'd like my kids to stay religious and faithful throughout their lives, wherever they land, and so I'm not going to rap knuckles and Hail Mary them to death. Maeve is greatly interested in why we give up meat, however. Especially why shrimp is not meat but chicken is, even though they are both breaded and dipped in ketchup in her mind and therefore are essentially the same thing.

I have given up yelling at my kids for Lent. Not yelling, because I still do a lot of that: "SOPHIA! COME DOWNSTAIRS!" happens in a house with 3 floors. But I no longer get angry and yell. It's made me realize how much I yell at my kids, and this was not a pleasant realization. But it's been going ok. I do a lot of calm repetition of phrases, though, which will get just as old as time goes by: go back to your room now and find your tights before you come down and brush your teeth go get your tights go get your tights go--thank you. But we leave the house in the morning just a bit more calmly, I think.

I considered coffee but I didn't want to fail the first week. It's been a rocky start to my Lent--not Lent's fault, but just circumstances around me. Leo's been hard to handle (teeth? personality disorder?), Mike's been teaching (meaning late nights and doesn't feel like talking when he gets home), the house is a mess because of both of those, and dang it, it got cold again. Add that to the trivia night I'm running this weekend and girl scouts and I'm swamped.

But I'm working hard to not let it get away from me. I make myself listen to the silence when it's there. Like right now.

72/365 St. Patrick's (Sort Of)

Today is the parade downtown. We have a float in the parade with our Irish dance school, and afterward the girls dance at a bar and grill downtown that is a work program for a Catholic homeless shelter--teaching folks how to work in a restaurant to give them skills to go out and find good work doing just that.

A lot about our school is like any other. We go to shows and we go to feiseanna (that would be competitions). We spend a lot of time doing hair in side rooms at nursing homes before the girls head out to dance on the cafeteria floors. There is competition between some girls, there are teams that get along, there are parents whose animus is only thinly veiled. And there is a lot of what I thought was lip service paid to Catholic tradition. Lots of references to Our Lady and asking what parish we go to and all that. Here in St. Louis it's expected that if you're not Catholic, you at least understand Catholic culture. And most of this I cynically accepted as a load of blarney.

But then sitting there eating my Irish stew and drinking my Irish coffee and watching my girls dance, I realized that McMurphy's Grill isn't usually open on Saturdays. They're a lunch place for downtown workers. But they're open for the St. Patrick's Day parade (the Saturday before St. Pat's). So that we can come and dance. Huh. And then in the bathroom a woman with a name tag said to me that "when they hired me they said I'd make more money today than any other day of the year and they're right, it's crazy kind of busy."

And suddenly I was glad. Glad that we dance there on St. Patrick's Day instead of some smoky bar, or even just back at the studio for parents (most of the patrons were connected to the school). It seemed like we meant it.

75/365 St. Eusebia

Today is St. Eusebia's Day. Not quite the same as tomorrow's St. Patrick's Day or Friday's St. Joseph's Day. But I like her story, as confusing and medieval as it is. And bizarre.

She lived in the 7th century, at the border of Belgium and France. She's the daughter of Adalbald and Rictrudis, both saints themselves. Her father Adalbald, the son of a St. Gertrude, married Rictrudis and later paid for it with his life--his inlaws murdered him. Rictrudis, fearful that her family would come after her and her daughter, sent Eusebia away to live with her grandmother Gertrude, who by that time was an abbess at Hamage. There she lived and grew to the age of 12, when Gertrude died and named Eusebia as her successor.

Well, a 12 year old in charge of a women's monastery didn't sit too well with several people, including her mother, who herself was an abbess at Marchiennes. Rictrudis ordered that Hamage and Marchiennes merge together under a single abbess (herself) and brought the nuns to live at Marchiennes, mostly against their will.

Eusebia and many of the nuns from Hamage wished to return to their home and rule themselves, but remained at Marchiennes under Rictrudis until enough time had passed that Rictrudis felt it would be prudent for Hamage to reopen under the guidance of Eusebia. The accounts I've read say that upon her return to Hamage with the "dissident nuns" she had grown into the position and ruled well until her death in 680.

The idea that she and those dissident nuns didn't immediately trot back to Hamage and snub Rictrudis is what I focus on here. They waited it out. It is so hard to wait it out, to know when the right time has come to do God's will, when your will and God's might be in alignment after all. It could be that Eusebia would have done a great job even at 12--it could also have been just as true that she would have been weak and petty her whole life and never come to be a good leader. Knowing the moment when one can say to someone in authority "I am ready and I am leaving," is tricky, as a child, a parent, an employee, an apprentice, a student. I know when I have said it--sometimes too early, other times just right. I watch as Sophia and Maeve say it, too. I try not to be too Rictrudis about it all. But I give enough tether to let them try their hand. At least that's my plan.

But the most interesting thing? As I read this account and really looked at the names, I thought to myself, "Adalbald? Gertrude of Ostravant? Wait."

In a bizarre twist, I realized that these names seemed more than just amusingly medieval. These names were familiar. These names were in my family tree, the ridiculously over-researched branches that stem back into France and Germany and Belgium. I'm not a descendant or direct relative of Eusebia, but I am of her grandmother Gertrude (this is not the only medieval saint in my genealogical search, but the first one that I found to be a saint after I already had her name and information in the tree). Just so happened I had nothing to say today and thought, "hey, who is the saint of the day?"

Which makes this kind of creepy.

No, it makes it really creepy.

St. Eusebia, pray for me. I am not about to forget you now!

106/365 At my funeral...

At my funeral, no one will sing "On Eagles Wings". Under penalty of severe haunting.

At my funeral, no one will sing "Amazing Grace" either.

At my funeral, if at all possible, I want Psalm 139 instead of Psalm 23: Behind and before you encircle me and rest your hand upon me.

At my funeral, I want people to pause between readings and the psalm. Between the second reading and the Alleluia. Between the gospel and the homily. Between. I want some space between these things.

At my funeral, I want someone to read well. Slowly. Perhaps something from Isaiah 35 or I Corinthians 13 or something cozy from Proverbs or Wisdom. Maybe the Gospel of John. I'm fuzzy on these details--there are many good things I would choose. I just would like it done with a meditative presence.

At my funeral, I want a homilist who won't give pat answers or tell people to rejoice or talk about what a great person I was unless he really knew me.

At my funeral, if someone gives a eulogy, it should be simple and to the point. Thoughtful. Something to ruminate upon.

But at my funeral, under no circumstances is anyone to use the moment as a platform to push his or her political views. Politics are verboten. Don't criticize the government in the homily, the eulogy, the worship aid, the bulletin board at the wake with my photos. Nope. Nada. Don't do it.

189/365 I wonder what else he said

So while I was caught talking to Missy, which wasn't as excruciating as all that, but did mean that I missed out on the first part of the conversation Mike was having with his family, I noticed that my father-in-law had gone to the back and said something to Fr. Miguel. It was brief and looked friendly and then I got caught up in trying to impress Missy (and failing), and then the debate over where we should go to lunch. But I wondered. My father-in-law is a man of few words except when it comes to stories about hunting, fishing, and work. He is not Catholic--he's not anything, really, just himself. But he's been soaked in Catholicism a long time married to my mother-in-law as he is.

Having decided on lunch, Mike asked his dad what he'd talked to Miguel about.

"Oh, I just told him I considered him one of the special priests," he explained. I may have the quote wrong. I'm hearing it from Mike, via his dad. When Mike told me this later, I pressed him for more details.

"That's all he said," Mike insisted. "I figure it just means Miguel is in a category with Fr. Stephen, you know, folks like that."

I knew what he meant.

190/365 So when do the peasants start revolting, anyway?

"I only saw him cry twice," my aunt says over lunch, speaking of the priest who married me and Mike, who had been intertwined in my extended family's life for decades. "Once when he was caring for the priest living with him who was dying of AIDS, and it just got too much to handle, it was still when nobody was talking about it and the man had made him swear not to tell anyone. And he said to me, 'I just have to tell someone,' and I thought, who am I going to tell, anyway?"

"And then the second time was about this priest, who was later assigned to be pastor at that church. He said that he knew a friend was abusing children. He was struggling with what to do about it."

I wait for her to continue. I know, from an outsider's perspective, what had gone on at that neighboring church when the proverbial shit hit the fan.

"He had gone to the diocese," she says with an exhale. "And he felt like he'd betrayed a confidence but he had to. His face just looked gray."

"But that must have been years ago," I think out loud.

She nods. "And then that priest was assigned to the parish in question, where it finally all went down."

It made me wonder. Had he really gone to the diocese, or was my aunt sugar coating the report? She was known to do that sort of thing. Had he just told her that? I couldn't see that being true. He took things pretty seriously over all. Or could it be yet another case of bishop malfeasance. Hmm. Let's think a moment.

249/365 Setting an example

Today's reading from the Rule instructs the abbot/prioress of a monastery to always have words match deeds. Do not live a "do as I say not as I do" kind of example.

Today at dinner, Sophia said a word that falls out of my mouth all the time. It wasn't one of the big 2 or 3 rated-R words I catch myself saying, it was further down the list but still definitely a PG-13 word. And as opposed to Maeve, who sometimes pushes boundaries because it's fun to get a reaction, I realized that Sophia didn't even know this word shouldn't be said.

"Just because your mother has a potty mouth doesn't mean you should," Mike admonished her, but gently because it was obvious she was genuinely misled by my lack of self control.

Something to look forward to for Lent, perhaps?

250/365 Prodigal Son

Today's Gospel reading, in the park under the trees, our annual mass in the park, was the story of the Prodigal Son. Fr. Miguel's homily was in first person, the older son telling his side of the story. I love homilies like this, that tell a story from a different perspective and illuminate our own situations. Because I am the older son. Always and forever, the oldest child in a family of 4. Or the valedictorian who is passed up to say the speech at graduation because I don't have a magnanimous heart (yes, that's what the principal said to me). I don't think I've ever been in the position of the younger son (at least not that I can remember), and rarely am I the one waiting for someone to return and bring them back into the fold. I am always the older brother.

I sat there looking at my kids, wondering about the dynamics of family and how things will go as they get older. My siblings and I get along remarkably well. Bevin and I are closest, probably, with proximity helping that a bit. Colleen and Bevin, though, are closer to each other than to either me or Ian. Down in Texas, Ian is geographically separated and easily could have been the younger son. But nothing so dramatic as all that. Our lives, as Mike puts it, are emotionally entangled in a way that not everyone's sibling relationships become. I keep telling Maeve that one day, she'll appreciate Sophia and Leo, that as she gets older things will smooth out and it'll be good to have siblings.

I hope that's true.

298/365 Chili Supper

I had a halloween thing I had to go to. But my dad entered a pot of chili into the chili cook-off this evening. Borrowed my crock pot. Cooked the stuff all day. Three times, I think he said. And he won--the people's choice award. Everyone who voted got 18 little cups of chili and a ballot. Good for him. And it put him in a good enough mood that when I approached him on Sunday about cutting some spare pews down to short 2-person sizes to put in the sanctuary for the altar servers to sit on, he wasn't hard to persuade. He had an apron and two free meals at next year's fish fry in his hand, after all.

I don't know if they'll ever feel like it's their parish, but I do keep trying.

303/365 RCIA preparation

I sat in the dining room with Sarah, the intern from the divinity school who is working with Sr. Hildegard this semester. I needed someone to tell me what to do and she was as good as anybody, frankly. I have RCIA again this Sunday--we were going to be out of town this weekend but changed our minds last week sometime when we figured out that was a ludicrous plan. Every weekend from August to Christmas is full, so yeah, let's go camping in November. Yeah! So, not really. And I raised my hand to take this week's because I feel lots of guilt about RCIA and how not involved I am because, if you hadn't taken notice, I'm busy. Biz. Ee.

But I did and then looked at my choices. Heaven and Hell, Resurrection, and Life stuff (the Catholic view of life issues like abortion, murder, death penalty, etc). Ugh. I wasn't going to be good at the first, I probably wasn't going to be able to talk confidently about the second (seriously), and the third made me clench my jaw because it reminded me of oh so many bad family dinners and gatherings with my elderly aunt and her family and the angry anti-living-people pro-life attitudes around the table. Don't help the poor, don't help them AT ALL, even their children don't deserve health care or good educations, but you'd better never ever vote for someone who isn't unwaveringly holding the abolition of all abortions no matter what as the first and foremost and, frankly, only issue worth talking about. It nauseates me on so many levels, and I don't support abortion as a way of life, I think in vitro fertilization is a slippery slope to scary stuff, and so forth--but I believe personally that these things should be between a person and her doctor, not between angry foaming at the mouth pro-life advocates and politicians and misguided feminists and so forth. And the evangelical hijacking of this issue and the Republican hijacking of the benighted Catholic population and so forth just makes this whole thing like a recently scabbed over cut on my leg. Let's not pick at it, shall we?

But I reconsidered. I reconsidered because the catechism is really so good at things sometimes. Its chapter on God's Will is Life goes over the whole spectrum of life issues and frankly, we're bringing into the church one completely uncatechized young woman and two women from Africa with language barriers of one variety or another. Perhaps it would be good for me to tackle this with enthusiasm and bring forth to their presence the actual ideas the Church holds instead of what this or that bishop spouted off about or what annoying piece of crap propaganda showed up in their mailboxes or from friends and acquaintances with rigid opinions.

So tonight I'm going to sit down and make a handout and an outline for myself. And it'll be ok.

After preparing and hashing things out with Sarah, we chatted about her future plans and then I gathered up Leo to get ready to leave. Fr. Miguel had me smell and guess the flavor of the coffee creamer in his fridge, which was peculiar and I couldn't quite place. While doing this, Leo went into his office and dialed Nairobi on the phone. Then Sarah showed us pictures of her dog's halloween costume and I went home thinking about all this and kept smiling. The things that keep me here...

316/365 Thanks

Thirty people in the house. No green bean casserole, but the best gravy. I could just drink it out of a glass. Dry stuffing and gravy on my plate and the sweet potato puree with the nuts on top. My favorite. I sit with Mike and his brothers and their wives. We're all shadows of each other. I see a lot of myself in them, different pieces of the mirror thirteen years behind me. Leo sits between me and Mike and his dad comes over with his plate, well, I can't even describe his plate, it's so obscenely full of Thanksgiving.

I think about his ridiculous luck, about when Pete and Steve were 11 and he broke his neck. I think about the layers of experience that happen and how they make a family out of individuals. If I knew what was coming tomorrow, I'd be thinking more about Maeve and what we'll lose and what we'll gain and what will happen. But I don't have a spyglass into the future and all I can see is the moment, the good red wine and John made an apple pie and I have nothing I have to do.

And I think about my brother and his wife and what their Thanksgiving must be like. My siblings and I have entangled emotional lives, Mike always likes to say. And there I do think about the future. Worried and useless, I think about things I'm thankful for. For our cats and our car that makes me feel smart. For getting into the next size down in jeans last month. For my kids and for oak trees and snowflakes and temporal lobe anomalies and tums and my wedding ring and girl scouts and our school and the BBC and how folks change over time and blogging and stained glass windows and neosporin and Pixar movies and the Ozarks and all the things that happen that make fabulous stories later on. And gravy.

337/365 Big Sister Moment (double posted)

This December has been filled with moments. Here is one.

I'm the oldest of 4. My brother Ian is 4 years younger than I am; Bevin is 5 years younger than him, and Colleen is 2 years younger than her. Spread out, kind of like my kids, actually. Enough time between that it's been hard for me to realize that my siblings have started catching up with me--there's a huge difference between 21 and 17, but not so much difference between 36 and 32. Not so much at all, in fact.

Ian and Ashley visited this Christmas. We all went to Christmas Eve mass (10 pm, not midnight, thank goodness), all but Mike, Leo, and Maeve since Maeve had a fever (of course). We sat in two front pews, my parents, Ian and Ashley, and my niece with Sophia. My sisters and I sat behind them. Snow was still falling outside but the church climate was warm, so we kept taking off and putting on coats and dripping from shoes and boots. Sophia and Kennedy were both dressed in party dresses for reasons I never really gathered fully. They'd worn them the night before to my parents' party and I suppose they equated them with Christmas. Anyway.

Sometime around the offertory, Ashley leaned her head against Ian's shoulder, and it totally caught me off guard. My brother is just over 6 foot and must weigh close to 270. He's huge. Ashley is barely 5 feet tall and one of those 120 pounds soaking wet kind of girls. That might even be more than she weighs when she's not pregnant. Tiny.

She's pregnant, in the category of high risk. They will know how high come January at the "big ultrasound" that we all do and none of us notices except if we're looking for the baby's gender. It has never hit me that it is truly an anomaly scan, even when the tech is measuring thicknesses and looking at the roof of the baby's mouth for a cleft. Craziness. Never had to worry. Ian and Ashley have to worry. The baby has Down Syndrome and that can bring with it a whole mixed bag of physical problems, most worrisome being heart defects. We just won't know until we know and on Christmas Eve that was still a long way away.

Earlier that day I'd picked up a baby book when I was at Catholic Supply getting the last Christmas gift (my parents have a creche that we add to each year, an unbreakable creche, I might add, although the woman at the counter said that dogs like to chew on Baby Jesus sometimes. My parents don't have a dog so that's ok). And a little cross to hang in the baby's room, one of those God Bless the Child etc. kind of sentiments. I was standing in line and there was a neighbor in front of me, a woman who goes to my church and lives on the next block and we know each other but I can never remember her name. She and her husband are going to be grandparents in the new year and she's glancing at the baby book and asks me who is having the baby--probably thinking it's me, after all, with my 3 and my youngest at almost 2. And it's Christmas Eve and I'd had a minor brush with death earlier in the day and it's snowing and I'm exhausted and I start to cry. Jesus. I'm not handling any of this well because I'm his older sister and if I could do anything on earth or in heaven to help them I would and I would, without a second thought switch places and have this baby and take this cup from them? You know?

Of course, my neighbor and fellow parishioner has a twin sister who has 7 kids and the last one in that row has Down Syndrome and we talk a moment (it's like everyone comes out of the closet when you break the ice, whether about DS or epilepsy or whatever). The girl behind the counter in her Notre Dame sweatshirt waits patiently. I'm in Catholic Supply, a store I usually detest going to but it was open and I realized I'd forgotten the damned creche and I had no time to make the ridiculous trip over to the shrine in Illinois where I'd rather shop for these things but, did I mention it was Christmas Eve and there was quite a bit of stress? And I'm crying at the counter in front of this woman who is just almost a complete stranger and I pay the girl and I walk out into the snow.

So it's later that night and my daughter is sick again and my heart just won't come to the point where it admits what day it is and Ashley puts her head on Ian's shoulder.

My brother, I should mention, has always been the type that worried me. The adulthood part, I mean. He always reminds me of the passage in that David Sedaris essay about his younger brother and finding out he's going to be a father. Something like my brother was the type who would disassemble the baby and then get distracted by something else, like the chance to eat 100 chicken wings, and forget to reassemble the baby. I'm paraphrasing but that's Ian in a nutshell.

At least the Ian I knew. The Ian who sat on the couch with his 6 year old and watched "Snakes on a Plane" while my girls hid in her bedroom, afraid of scary movies. The Ian who eats habanero peppers to prove his manliness. The Ian who used to drink amazing amounts of alcohol, the Ian who took 47 years to get his bachelor's degree. And so forth. Not an adult.

We'd spent the week together, doing St. Louis things like the Arch and the City Museum and eating Italian food on the Hill because Ashley likes toasted ravioli and even though you can get them in the freezer section nationwide, perhaps, they still are kind of a St. Louis thing. Kennedy, my niece, has grown up a lot. She's 6 months younger than Sophia and is a grade behind her due to birthdays, but she's smart as a whip and nice. Nice counts for a lot when you're the aunt. Later that night she would open my present to her, a sampler quilt with colonial lady blocks, and she would be genuinely happy about it. Nice.

And this week together had shown me that Ian's edges had been worn down in similar ways that mine had. He didn't tease Kennedy, or Ashley, the way he used to. He didn't talk politics with me to get me going unnecessarily. Things were subdued, but not bad. He was more like my friends and less like the people I avoided in high school.

So Ashley puts her head on his shoulder and he puts his arm around her and I suddenly realize he's an adult. She is too, but that wasn't the shock. He's about to be the father of two, one of whom, a little boy, is going to need a lot of care and love and prayer. A baby they're planning to name Ethan, which means steadfast.

It was one of those moments. I've been having a lot of them lately. The most recent one was Maeve's seizure, realizing how incredibly beautiful she is, while she lay there in a post-ictal cataonia. And here it was again. It was another beauty in fear and worry moment. They're here, they're together, they're adults.

What was that I said about life persisting?



The Dream Keeper by Langston Hughes

Bring me all of your dreams,
you dreamers,
Bring me all your heart melodies,
that I may wrap them in a blue cloud cloth,
Away from the too rough fingers of the world